New Illini West Head Coach Maddie Owak Shaping Up Volleyball For Macomb Invitational Aug. 27

by Dessa Rodeffer, Quill Publisher

The Illini West Varsity Volleyball team are gearing up the season under a new head coach, Madeline ("Maddie") Owak who began coaching the girls last Wednesday, August 10th with a 3 hour work-out to test where the girls were at physically with their game.

The day included running a mile under 10 minutes which for the most part, Coach Owak felt good about. The 3-hour practices continue once a day until their first game, a non-conference opener Saturday, August 27 at 8:00 at the Macomb Invitational.

That tournament will follow with another non-conference game in Augusta before conference games begin on Tuesday, September 6 in Macomb for both Jr. Varsity (6:00 p.m.) and Varsity (7 p.m.).

Coach Owak Manages the Family Fitnessfi Center in Carthage, and comes to Illini West with 11 years of playing volleyball herself. Three of those years were at the University of Missouri/Rolla and a semester at WIU in Macomb.

She loves the sport so much if she had her way, she would never stop playing volleyball, she said.

For the Illini West Lady Chargers, she is eager to improve their last year's Varsity record of 19-15, and working on fan appeal, hopefully improving attendance at games.

This season's teams have 17 girls on varsity and 19 girls on Jr. Varsity.

A solid twenty she said, attended two open gyms weekly throughout the summer and 4 or 5 played basketball through the summer and were unable to come.

The Junior Varsity Coach is Cindy Hanks who was moved to coaching JV after the Freshman program was dropped due to this year's low numbers.